


Whereabouts of the Heart

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: AAverse, Cultural Differences, Fluff, Happy Ending, Love Languages, M/M, Romance, Saint Seiya Rarepair Week 2020, Universe Alteration - Anthro, Universe Alteration - Otherkin, no beta we die like gold saints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26905090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: [Day 4: Cultural Differences] A day in the Meikai usually starts with simple things. Like learning how to walk when you gained hooves last week. And figuring out what your boyfriend is doing with his surplice, because that doesn't look familiar. Worst of it all, learning to navigate how Spectres avoid killing each other on a regular basis. Yes, this must be a completely normal day in the Meikai with a Spectre boyfriend.
Relationships: Bennu Kagaho/Libra Dohko
Comments: 13
Kudos: 6
Collections: Saint Seiya Rarepair Week 2020





	Whereabouts of the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I am aware I haven't posted day three, and also it's day five. I was out of commission yesterday because pain pain and more pain, so I'm playing catchup. I hope to post day five later on tonight, and day three probably tomorrow, as it's half done. Day three proved to be harder to write than I thought, but it'll get done, I swear.  
> In the meantime, have some idiots. Sylphide and his apprentice, Maria (the eldest of the orphanage trio) also make an appearance. Slight content warning for a fade-to-black implied sex scene at the end.

Dohko sat cross-legged on the sofa that had been stuffed into one corner of the room, watching Kagaho fuss with his surplice on the other side of the room. It had been a week since the Libra Surplice had arrived at his temple in Sanctuary and asked him if he wanted to come be a part of the Meikai for real. He had accepted, naturally, because the Meikai was where Kagaho was, and they were getting rather serious about their relationship.

One day, he would need to choose which god to ally himself with permanently. He was beginning to think that maybe it wouldn't be Athena. It wasn't like Kagaho could leave - Sui was still dead, for all that he walked around and chirped at everyone - and Dohko would never ask him to lose his brother for the second time. And the more he learned about Hades' side of things, the more he wasn't sure that Athena had ever, at any point, been in the right.

Kagaho rose from his seated position, his long trail of tail feathers swishing with the movement. Right now, they drifted onto the floor, closed and kept out of the way. Sometimes, when Kagaho felt like it, when they were settled into a bath together and the air was right, he'd fan out his tail, the black overfeathers no longer hiding his bright flame-coloured plumage, false eyes and all. Not unlike a peacock, if peacocks were coloured like fire and not like gardens. But right now, his tail was closed and kept just above the ground, and the feathers on the back of his neck rested easily against his skin.

Dohko's own tail twitched, though his was more scaled than feathered, with a tip of fur that Kagaho noted wasn't common in Libra dragons. Why he had fur where the others of his line didn't, he didn't know, and Kagaho didn't know enough about them to guess.

"Having fun?" he asked, somewhat dryly. "I mean, I still don't know what you've been doing for the past twenty minutes, but you looked like you were having fun."

Kagaho raised an eyebrow. "Then I suppose that answers what we're doing today once you figure out how to walk," he answered. Kagaho was a bit of a man of few words, preferring to speak in very expressive eyebrows and the feathers on the back of his neck. Dohko was still learning what it all meant, though he'd gotten a pretty good grasp on those eyebrows. 

He blinked. "What are we doing once I figure out how to walk?" Kagaho did have a point - right now, he was a Libra dragon from the waist down, all scales and dragon legs ending in the cloven hooves signature to the species. As far as he understood the lecture he'd gotten from Aiacos, the hooves were because the Libra dragons had originated as the cross between a minotaur and a wyvern. Seemed an unlikely match, but who was he to say what had happened during the Age of Myth? The point was still that he hadn't exactly figured out how to walk properly on a pair of hooves, and until he could run on them normally and avoid the natural dangers of the Meikai without starting a fight he couldn't win, there was little reason to leave the neighbourhood where Kagaho lived.

"I am taking you to the forges, and you are learning how to repair your surplice, because there will be several times when you have no other choice but to do it yourself, and I'd rather not resurrect you because of your own idiocy," Kagaho replied. His voice was grumpier than his cosmos indicated, and Dohko grinned. A day in which Kagaho was insulting him was a day that meant they weren't in any danger. He rose from his spot, carefully setting both hooves on the floor before rising, one hand thrown to either direction to keep him from falling over. He focused on the ground, taking a hesitant step, sure that the hoof would take his weight before taking another step. His knees bent the wrong way, and it felt subtly wrong, and also right, like he knew how to do this and had simply forgotten it, while knowing that this wasn't how he'd been walking for almost twenty years.

It took him an impressively long time to make his way over to Kagaho, who stood with his arms folded and hadn't moved any closer. He was a bird from the waist down just as much as Dohko was a dragon, though his anatomy had adjusted itself to be human-size. He walked without a problem on bird feet, which definitely irritated him a little, but hey, not many people could say they were shapeshifters, even if he was really bad at it.

When he finished walking over, he settled his hands on Kagaho's hips, and kissed him. Kagaho relaxed under his touch, slipping his arms around his shoulders and leaning ever so slightly down. Dohko was actually a little taller when he had the legs of a dragon, and he took advantage of his newfound height by deepening the kiss, brushing his tongue against Kagaho's lips in hopes for entry. Kagaho complied, opening his mouth enough to brush his own tongue against Dohko's.

Kissing Kagaho was an activity he always liked to participate in, though he'd quickly learned he needed to be a bit more careful - the teeth of a dragon were sharper, more suited for meat than plants, and unless he wanted to accidentally slice Kagaho's lip open, he needed to be careful on how he kissed him. Kagaho's tongue brushed up against his own. He smiled inwardly, tensing a muscle in his tongue he wasn't aware he'd had before he'd discovered that dragons, like snakes, had forked tongues. Kagaho's tongue slipped into the fork with a soft noise - though who made it, he wasn't sure - and he felt him relax further. 

They broke for breath a few moments later, still connected partway by a line of saliva, which Dohko licked away with his tongue. Kagaho's smile was lopsided and brief, but it was worth all the more for the streak of pink across his cheeks, and the feeling of his tail fanning out. He only ever did that for Dohko, he'd noticed. If Sui walked in, he tended to close it up, and he'd never done it for anyone else that he'd seen.

"We should get going," Kagaho murmured, with the voice of a man who had no interest on stepping away. He had a strong sense of duty, but Dohko also made for a very good distraction from his tasks as lieutenant of Garuda. He grinned, flashing sharp dragon's teeth, and slipped his hand into the crook of Kagaho's elbow.

"Probably, and I bet you want to watch me fall on my face again," he agreed. Kagaho rolled his eyes. He held out a hand to Bennu - or rather, Seigneur Bennu, as Dohko had learned when the metal phoenix had scolded him for waking them up at two in the morning - and the surplice flickered, appearing easily in the form of armour around him. Spectres didn't seem to go through the same sort of transformation Saints did when calling their armour. They just asked it to come, and it came.

Kagaho lead the way out of their shared apartment, which was in truth Kagaho's, which he graciously shared with Dohko, and naturally shared with Sui. Dohko had discovered that the other doors on their floor belonged to other Celestial Stars in Garuda - despite the size of Antenora, where Aiacos lived, his inner circle had largely fled to the city of Dis between the Fourth and Fifth prisons, where they took up most of a building not far from the abandoned wreckage of the main roads. It made sense, really: those who had the most power had to be the first to rise in the case of an invasion.

Aiacos had noted that he would need proper training as a Spectre once he'd figured out the basics of being one, a task he'd given to Kagaho with a smug smile and the light in his eyes that said he knew exactly how that was going to go. 

It was reasonably difficult to fluster or fool the Garuda. Kagaho had said once that it would've had to be, considering Aiacos had existed since the Age of Myth and had, in his words, never stopped being a hero for a moment. Dohko wasn't sure how exactly anyone could consider a Judge of Hell to be a hero, but he'd never known Kagaho to be wrong, and besides, he trusted him.

They ignored the sound of something exploding from behind Violate's front door as they made their way towards the stairs, which Dohko eyed distrustfully. Stairs were the bane of his hooved existence, and Kagaho only spared him a glance, not bothering to slow down as he took them.

Dohko let go of his arm, finding the banister and stepping slowly onto the first stair. Kagaho stopped, folding his arms a few steps down. "You aren't going to slip and fall on your ass," he pointed out.

"No," Dohko agreed, when his hoof seemed steady. "But my knees bend the wrong way and they might buckle on me, causing me to fall on my ass. Going up I can do. Coming down, not so much. Give me a hand, will you?"

Kagaho blinked. "Your knees don't bend the wrong way…?"

Dohko pointed at his knee, which was definitely bending the wrong way. The back of his knee had a tuft of fur on it, a brassy orange streaked with black. "My knee definitely doesn't bend like that when I have human legs."

Kagaho pinched the bridge of his nose, heaving a large sigh of irritation. "Dohko, that is your ankle."

He blinked, tilting his head to one side. His ear flicked involuntarily, elongated as it was to match the crown of horns upon his head. "Come again?"

Kagaho stepped forward, touching his knee which was still bending the wrong way. "That is your ankle. Your knee is here." His fingers glided up to what he'd taken was just a bend in his thigh. He gripped the banister, lifting his leg from the stairstep, and bent what Kagaho had just touched.

It moved perfectly, like his knee was supposed to. He tipped his hoof upwards, like pointing his toes, bending what Kagaho said was his ankle. It moved the exact way he'd expect his ankle to move. Like he'd been standing on his toes the entire time, when he had hooves.

He set his hoof back down, mentally mapping his hooves to his toes, the lowest bend to the balls of his feet, his not-knees to his ankles, the bend in his thighs to his knee. Cautiously, he took a step downwards. His ankle didn't buckle. He took another step. It felt completely natural, even with his tail swaying almost automatically back and forth, aiding his balance.

He took a breath, and walked down the stairs like a normal person, stopping at the landing. He usually took a lot longer to make this journey. He blinked, and strode across the landing, taking the next flight at twice the speed he usually did. Kagaho followed him, behind him but with a profound sense of amusement twisted into his cosmos.

His lover wasn't laughing at him, but a little impressed it took him this long to figure that out. Before he knew it, he was down on the ground floor in the lobby of the apartment building, Kagaho following with his wings settled against his back, and offered his arm for Dohko to take.

Dohko took it, and they left the building, finding that walking was a lot easier if he just accepted he had to walk on his toes. He kept his hand on the bend of Kagaho's elbow. Now that he wasn't focused on not falling on his face, he could look around at the city around him, taking in the sights of a Spectre population that mostly wasn't on duty. The ones that were on duty were out on the ground world, making things difficult for the rest of the world and gathering supplies that couldn't be found down here.

A fiddler was playing by the fountain not far away, a couple of Spectres he didn't recognize settled into some chairs nearby. They had to be Spectres, anyway - they had surplices on that definitely weren't the footsoldier Skeletons, which Kagaho had drilled into him to recognize. They'd forgive him for not knowing the intricacies of every single one quite yet, but higher-ranked Spectres wouldn't forgive him for mistaking them for a footsoldier. If they didn't have a scythe, they probably weren't a footsoldier, and he was sticking by that rule.

Except for the Spectre who definitely had one, that looked to be cleaning off their armour in the fountain. They didn't look like a Skeleton, though - those were singular-coloured, and this one had silver gilding all across their armour, and a pair of feathered wings that definitely weren't entirely metal.

He leaned closer to Kagaho. "Who's that, in the fountain?" he asked, keeping his voice low.

"Celestial Calling Star Reaper Eleanor, Griffon," Kagaho murmured. "It's rare you'll see her out and about, she's the head of the psychopomps, and she's usually out being the grim reaper for us. I don't think she knows she's not supposed to bathe in the fountain, but she's high enough ranked that nobody's going to argue with her about it."

Dohko nodded, and they continued. He wasn't entirely sure where they were going, although he assumed the forges, eventually. He didn't know where the forges even were, either, and it wasn't like Kagaho had ever shown him a map of the Meikai. Nor was he sure one would help. Sometimes the Acheron changed direction on him, and he was absolutely certain that some of the roads he was used to changed where they lead when he wasn't looking. 

"So… Where are we going, exactly?"

"Hm?" Kagaho glanced over to him, and his smile wasn't large, but it was gentle, and it was enough that Dohko leaned up and kissed the corner of Kagaho's mouth, without breaking stride. Somewhere between the main roads of Dis and the start of the Sixth Prison, indicated by the geysers of red water that looked uncomfortably like blood, he'd figured out how to walk properly, and now didn't have to think about it nearly as much. "We're heading to the forges, which are currently north of us."

Kagaho pointed to something on the horizon, which looked like dark, sharp-tipped mountains somewhere past the desert at the end of Sixth. Between them was the geysers of blood, the forest, and the desert. From his time on the zipline, trying to get to Antenora with any speed at all, it was going to take them quite a few hours of walking.

"We aren't going to get there until noon, if we walk," Dohko pointed out. "Are we going to fly? Or am I being put through surprise endurance training?"

Kagaho let out a scoff of amusement. "You still haven't caught onto how things work. I'm betting about half an hour to get there, and then we see how you've figured out those hooves of yours."

"I have flown over Sixth with you and with the zipline, and there is no way in hell we can get to the mountains from here in half an hour." Dohko glanced behind him. Dis, which they'd left behind about ten minutes prior, wasn't visible on the horizon. There was nothing in that direction but geysers. He turned back towards Kagaho, tail waving in confusion. "Where'd it…?"

Kagaho's smile was slightly more pronounced. "We have a need to get to the forges, because you have things you need to learn. So here we are, halfway through the geysers of Sixth, and we'll be reaching the forest anytime now. The Meikai is magic and sentient. I've told you this before. Why wouldn't it disregard distance for those who love it, if we ask it to?"

He blinked, slowly, staring up at his lover. It made sense, sort of. Not really, actually, and it made his head hurt to think about. "Okay, so… Distance just doesn't matter, then? From someone who's standing still watching us pass, what do they even see? Do they notice us at all, or are we just basically teleporting every time we take a step?"

Kagaho looked profoundly amused, but tugged his arm all the same, resuming their walk. "They can see us pass them by, but you also have to remember that a god of time resides here, and his power is such that the Meikai can control how time passes. You wouldn't notice ordinarily that time doesn't pass quite the same way down here, but we look as though we're walking over normal distance to a passerby. If they were to walk over to us, they would cross all the distance to where we actually are, because the ground is shifted differently for them. It may take us ten minutes to walk what is ten paces for them, unless we followed them as a group." He paused, sighing a little. "It really isn't something I can explain with any true accuracy," he admitted. "It's one of those issues that you simply have to practice until you know what it's going to do."

Dohko nodded slowly. It made sense, in all the ways that it didn't, but he was also dragon from the waist down, with a pair of horns to match, so he supposed he could forgive it. True to his word, the treeline, which a few moments prior hadn't been on the horizon, was about thirty paces away. "So I'll get used to the landscape just being weird, good to know. If I may… How long _have_ you been in the Meikai?"

Kagaho looked up to the overcast sky, thinking for a moment. "About… five or six years, now? I was thirteen when I showed up and started yelling at the Judges. Aiacos thought I was maybe worth the extra corpse on the battlefield, and let me stay. I suppose he hasn't ever regretted that choice, given my position."

Dohko smiled. Kagaho was second-in-command, and had been since before the Holy War. He was a powerful warrior, and he had the focus of someone who did it both as his passion, his career, and the way to put food on the table. He fought like someone who knew the alternative was death, and it made him the sort of Spectre no sane person would want to fight without backup. It was reassuring, in his way. He wasn't likely to get grievously hurt in battle, and certainly not by one of Dohko's colleagues.

He leaned over slightly, resting his cheek on the front of Kagaho's shoulder, careful to avoid his pauldron. It was a relaxing walk, as they crossed over into the forest, the bare sunlight vanishing from beneath the canopy. The air was sweet and still, almost like Lushan when the wind wasn't around. It smelled like it was full of life, though Dohko knew it to be a contradiction: every single tree here was a soul, condemned to this forest to exist and eventually be freed and made into lumber for whatever the Spectres needed wood for. Most of the trees had been here for thousands of years. He wasn't afraid of the woods, though. This was a prison, held by one of the Wyverns, and technically, his own quarters were somewhere within this wod, within the great Cathedral of the Gold Surplices. Not that he and Seigneur Libra actually lived there. He had to split his time between Sainthood and Spectrehood, and when he was taking his time as the latter, he had a tendency to prefer sleeping directly on top of Kagaho's shoulder.

He was a dragon, after all. And as he was coming to understand, that meant he wanted a hoard, in some way. According to Rhadamanthys, the other dragon he knew, 'hoard' was practically a synonym for 'family'. If nothing else, it also included his collection of fancy teacups. Kagaho had given in and resolved to help him construct a few shelves specifically for displaying them, and whenever they happened to be out on the ground world for a date - exceedingly rare, as their spare time went - they ended up buying a few more.

It was a good thing both of them had the love of tea all but entrenched in their blood. Coming from such similar cultures would do that, and their teacups saw quite a bit of use. The woods fell away behind them - and they hadn't been inside them for more than ten minutes - and soon enough, they were crossing the desert, the final area of Sixth, guarded by unsurprisingly, another Wyvern.

It wasn't far into the desert that Dohko noticed a rock outcropping that hadn't been there the last time he passed this way, and atop it was a Spectre. Below it, just in the shade, was what looked to be an apprentice, in proper training gear, a wet towel around their neck. Kagaho waved with his free hand.

The Spectre - winged and blue, which was all he could say about him, waved back. "Hey, birdface!"

When they were close enough not to shout, Kagaho let out a birdlike whistle. "Hello, slimy," he answered, voice still gruff and grumpy. He shifted his weight until he was definitely between Dohko and his fellow Celestial - this must be the guardian of this area of Sixth, though Dohko didn't recognize him at all. He opened his mouth slightly, tasting the wind. A sweet, floral poison, woodsmoke, and a faint scent he identified as 'lizard'. The woodsmoke was definitely from Rhadamanthys, whose scent was one Dohko wouldn't forget in a hurry.

Spectres had a heightened sense of smell, to recognize where their fellows had been recently. The Judges were the ones whose scents could probably be smelled by normal humans, and it had nothing to do with hygiene - really, if anyone who didn't know them had to guess, they would've said the trio wore cologne everywhere. They didn't need to.

The scent of woodsmoke marked this Spectre as a high-ranking, inner-circle Wyvern, probably not lieutenant but someone high up. Dohko still had no idea who he was.

 _Basilisk-foréas, Basilisk of the Fair Folk_ , whispered a soft voice in his ear that he recognized as the Libra Surplice's. They weren't an avid talker, but sometimes, their words were incredibly useful. He didn't recall ever meeting the Basilisk Spectre before, but he did know that when they had a special title, they had been around since the Age of Myth, and were past him in terms of fighting.

"Who's the hatchling, Sylphide?" Kagaho asked, flicking the tip of one wing towards the apprentice. She didn't look too pleased, glowering at him from her place in the shade. Dohko got the feeling she wasn't too pleased to be out in the heat.

The Basilisk - Sylphide, then - guffawed. "Oh, she's new. Master Alone's orders, she finally picked her division, so I get a new kid to train." He glanced down at her. "Having fun, Maria?"

"No," she answered, her tone implying an overdramatic misery. Apprentices, he'd found, were all the same no matter what army they came from. "And I don't know who Sir Bennu's friend is, either."

Kagaho bared his teeth, which were pointed, and stepped just enough to the side for Dohko to be more visible to the pair, even though he was definitely still in between them. Dohko narrowed his eyes. "This is Celestial Judicial Star Libra Dohko, and he is my mate. I suggest you keep to your place, apprentice."

Maria's glower intensified. Sylphide snorted. "No need to be so dramatic, nobody's questioning whether you get to keep your lizard or not."

Dohko tensed and started to step forward. That was an insult, and he wasn't going to stand for it. Kagaho shifted just enough to put his shoulder in the way, stopping him from going forward. Their eyes locked for just a moment, and there was a warning in his pale eyes. _Stay put_ , those eyes said. _Let me deal with it_.

"I'm allowed, and I outrank you," Kagaho answered, his cosmos a lot more tense than it had been a moment ago. "Unless you fancy a reminder of that, keep your apprentice in line. A good evening and fine hunting to you, Basilisk."

He tugged Dohko onward. Dohko followed, noting how closely he was embraced by Kagaho's wing. Rather, it was the wing of his surplice - shifting into a form where he had actual wings required losing his arms, and there had been enough jokes about opposable thumbs between them that he never questioned it.

It wasn't until they left the desert for the ashy foothills of the mountains that Kagaho spoke. "Next time a Spectre does that, where they question us, let me handle it."

"I would love an explanation for that one," Dohko answered, a touch more irritated than before. "I can fight my own battles. I may not know what's going on, but I'm not _weak_." He didn't like the implication that had come from both Spectres that he was, that just because he didn't always know the language and culture they were using also meant that he had to be kept safe.

"Nobody said you were, but it wasn't your fight." Kagaho bumped his shoulder ever so gently against Dohko's, the sort of affection he was prone to. "Sylphide wasn't challenging your right to exist, he was challenging my taste in men, which warrants an answer from me, not from you. Putting yourself in the middle would have dragged us both into a conflict with the Wyverns. You may be able to beat him in a fight - you probably could, in all honesty - but if that happened, Sylphide's mate would also answer, likely to challenge me, and I don't feel like getting my tail handed to me by Rhadamanthys because you picked a fight when you didn't mean to. If he challenges you directly, sure. But you can't step in for me the way I can for you."

"Because I'm not a real Spectre to these people?" he demanded. His tail had started lashing as their footsteps met the rocky start of the mountains proper.

"Because I'm of higher rank than you, and it's a Spectre's duty to look out for their subordinates, which you technically are," Kagaho answered. His tone was less gruff, gentler, and thicker on his strange Japanese-London accent, a telltale sign he was trying to be genuine. He turned to face Dohko, a hand on Dohko's, still tight on Kagaho's elbow. "You're not below me, you're not lesser than me. But Spectres go by rank, all by rank. You're technically under my command, which makes it my duty to look out for you. If I take a challenge from you, it means I'm dragging you out of the shallow grave you made. If you do the same for me, it makes it look like I cannot do my duty."

Dohko glared, if only slightly. "That isn't fair to either one of us. We stick up for each other. That's what lovers do."

Kagaho nodded. "That is the one exception to the rule. You can't stick up for me as my subordinate. You can stick up for me as my mate. If I get injured and need to recover, if I'm out of commission, then my duties automatically fall to you, and you step into my place until I'm better. Unless I name someone else to do that, which I haven't and I won't, that goes to you. We share quarter, we share bounty, when we're together we operate as two parts to a whole. But when it's a matter of rank, I'm higher up in the chain, which means the rules will force us both to act like it."

Dohko relaxed. It was a bit better of an arrangement, looking at it that way. He disliked the idea that anyone thought he wasn't capable, and more so, the idea of not being able to stick up for Kagaho when he needed him to was actually somewhat repulsive. He couldn't imagine being forced to be so helpless. "I… guess so," he answered, finally. "I just don't like the idea that I can't fight your battles too. Your battles are our battles, and so are mine."

Kagaho let out a soft chuckle. "You are such a dragon," he said, and his voice was soft with an affection Dohko had realized he craved ever since Kagaho had first said anything with that tone in his direction.

"How is wanting things to be equal a dragon trait?" Dohko asked, and he couldn't fight the smile from his face. Kagaho returned it.

"You can't exist without wanting to protect what you consider yours at every opportunity you can," he answered, and kissed him.

Dohko's reply faded in his mouth with the sudden intrusion of Kagaho's tongue, and he relaxed, releasing Kagaho's elbow at long last to reach up for his collar, allowing his tongue to fork properly. A soft shuffling noise that no ordinary human might have heard betrayed Kagaho fanning out his tail. Dohko broke the kiss, partially for breath, partially to check out the view.

Kagaho could make his tail look like the back of a ballroom gown, if he tried. As it was now, it swept half the size of his wingspan, lifted a few inches off the ground. Dohko looked up at him. Surprisingly, Kagaho was blushing.

"What's with the blush?" he asked. "I'm a good kisser, sure, but you don't blush just like that."

Kagaho looked away, choosing instead to focus on the horizon. It was almost cute, when he did that, like he was shy about admitting his affection. "You keep checking out my tail," he answered.

"Your tail is pretty, and you don't fan it out for anyone but me, of course I want to take a look," Dohko pointed out. He paused, furrowing his eyebrows. His tail brushed against Kagaho's ankle, keeping him close. "Is there some sort of animal thing about your tail I don't know about?"

"You may as well be checking out my naked ass, if you're going to get me to show off my tail," came the reply, with barely-restrained embarrassed laughter. Kagaho was still steadfastly refusing to look at him, but his blush deepened all the same.

Dohko blinked, and grinned. That made a little more sense, then - he knew animals tended to have specific behaviours when courting mates, though he'd never thought of the habit extending to Spectres. Though, they didn't typically refer to their lovers as such, settling on the more therianthropic term of 'mate' over anything human, so he wasn't sure what else he expected. Reaching forward, feeling a little bolder, he ran his hand from his tailbone down Kagaho's tail, fingering through the feathers.

Kagaho took in a soft breath, and his cosmos shifted a little more from a dark blue-violet to more of a muddy maroon. Dohko's grin widened.

"Isn't there hot springs up in these mountains?" he asked. "Rhadamanthys said they were good for an after-battle swim, and we're both creatures of heat."

Only then did Kagaho meet his gaze, still blushing. "Bold, but yes, there are. Might I assume we're not going to make it to the forges for a few hours?"

"You might assume as much," Dohko agreed, and Kagaho rolled his eyes, shaking his head in exasperation. Dohko could tell he wasn't complaining, though. It was always nice to be speaking the same dialect of animal, despite one of them being a bird and the other a questionable cross between dragon and mammal.

"Lead the way, then," Kagaho said, gesturing to a path up the mountain that hadn't been there a moment prior. Dohko offered his arm, slipping his own tail around the back of Kagaho's thighs. Kagaho took it.


End file.
